


can you just find him for me

by elephantastic



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hand Jobs, Just a lot of hands in general, M/M, Miscommunication, Not Canon Compliant, Overstimulation, Post Season 2, as two old men both alike in intimacy issues desperately trying to reconnect, not so much a fix-it, with a happy ending tbc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:15:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28559652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elephantastic/pseuds/elephantastic
Summary: Din’s restlessness is smothered by a concrete screed of disappointment. He stands there, struck dumb by his own presumption. He sees himself on the night he arrived, laying hands on Cobb’s face like he had every right to, without even considering that his touch might be unwelcome for more reasons than one. Cobb is watching him, alive with tension again. Din wonders distantly if fraught silence is the only language they share anymore.or Din lands back in Mos Pelgo after a long absence and finally giving up Grogu
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 40
Kudos: 191





	can you just find him for me

Mos Pelgo has changed, its progression from grim survival to cautious prosperity visible even from the air. What was a single street has expanded into a neat little grid, bordered on its western edge by the kind of minimal infrastructure needed to support a transient Tusken camp. Now that he’s trudging into town on foot, Din sees evidence of community and comfort in the well-tended house fronts and the gleam of new machinery.

There’s a solitary figure waiting for him just inside the town bounds, hips askew. Mos Pelgo is different, but in the twilight between two sunsets Cobb looks the same, and the lanky tilt of him grabs Din around the throat.

He feels at a distinct disadvantage. The desert doesn’t afford much camouflage, and they would have seen him coming a ways off. Cobb seems calm, expectant. Whatever his initial reaction was, Din isn’t privy to it. Even through the fog of exhaustion, not knowing makes Din itch.

“Mando,” Cobb straightens himself out. “What can we do for you?”

Din hadn’t known what kind of welcome to expect. But Cobb is aloof. Polite, distant tone and polite, distant face. And it _cuts_. Right through the tender bubble of hope that Din had been nursing under the crushing weight of all his grief. It’s the tiniest of internal ruptures, but Din has been close to breaking point for nearly three weeks now. He feels his composure give.

“I’m sorry, I thought… I gave him up. G—My kid. I left him.”

Cobb seems to register Grogu’s absence, then. He curses under his breath, and something in his expression turns turbulent. Din holds himself very still in the tense silence that follows.

“I think,” Cobb starts. And stops, as if even he doesn’t know which way he wants to end his sentence. Din waits for the verdict to fall. “I think we should talk.” Cobb angles his body away, towards town and home: an invitation.

The relief is staggering, and Din sags further under the rush of it.

“Yeah. You don’t look like you’ll be giving us much trouble. Let me call off the welcoming committee,” Cobb mutters, and waves an all-clear. Three guns conspicuously disappear from behind windows and atop roofs. Din blinks. He’d only counted two. “Didn’t know it was you. We’ve grown, but we still don’t get many strange ships touching down in the neighbourhood.”

The walk through town is mercifully short. In these last few weeks of running, Din has held the shape of Cobb’s little house in his mind as a goal and a landing-place, when the shape of Cobb himself was too bruising to keep him going. The sight of it is far beyond welcome.

Something shifts in the shadows of Cobb’s porch, a huge, grizzled massiff that lurches to its feet, head-butting Cobb’s hand in greeting. Cobb leans down to give it a couple of affectionate thumps on the shoulder and looks back at Din.

“This is Croak, she’s mine.”

Din is afforded a desultory sniff, before the massiff shoulders her way through the door that Cobb’s propping open. The kitchen is lit by a small lamp perched on the edge of the table, which is littered with papers and a datapad full of mining specs. Cobb shuffles them to the side and dumps a plate with the remnants of a half-eaten meal into the sink.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Cobb snorts. “It’d already gone cold anyway.”

He drops into a chair and kicks one out for Din.

“I’d offer you a drink, but then you’d have to go off and down it alone. And you wouldn’t be here if that’s what you needed, would you?” Cobb has definitely lost his grip on civility, and his words are coming out so rueful they’re almost bitter. Din doesn’t know what to do with any of it. He sits. Cobb’s jaw works in the building silence.

“Is he safe?”

“Yes. It was—” Din struggles to settle on an adequate descriptor for the last two months of hell “—tricky. But he’s with his kin. The people looking for him, they can’t find him and they can’t find me. I made sure, before I came.”

“That’s good to know.”

“I wouldn’t have come otherwise,” Din repeats, dogged.

“Hm.”

Cobb’s leg is vibrating with a frenetic kind of disquiet. The massiff has circled back, and she leans against him heavily, depositing her head in Cobb’s lap. Cobb stills. His hand runs over the sharp quills at her neck in a way that speaks to care and easy familiarity. When he speaks again, his words are brusque.

“Why are you here?”

“Because you’re the only one who—” _knows what I’ve just lost. What he was to me and what I was to him and what I could’ve become if we’d just had more time._ Din wants to be honest, owes Cobb that much at least, but his thoughts are so big and raw that he can’t help but choke on them. His heart feels like it’s breaking again, still, all the fucking time. “He needed me, and now he’s gone, and I—”

Cobb reaches across the table. Peace offering or pity, Din doesn’t hesitate. He envelops Cobb’s hand in both of his. It’s warm, solid. The muscles in Cobb’s wrist flex gently under his fingertips. Din finds himself wishing they were skin to skin, but he hasn’t thought to take his gloves off, and he doesn’t think that Cobb would offer his hand again if he were to let go now. He clings greedily, instead.

“What did you think you were going to find here?” Cobb’s voice is low and rough. He doesn’t look up from where Din is rubbing intent little circles near the knuckle of his thumb.

The truth is, Din hadn’t had much time to think, letting himself be driven by instinct and the pull of years of accumulated longing. Cobb is still looking at him like he’s trying to reach a decision, and Din can’t seem to find the words that would allow him to heave the heart of the matter into the air between them. He closes his eyes against the heaviness in his head.

“Hey, are you still with me?”

Din startles pathetically. He has no idea how long his eyes have been closed. “I didn’t know where else to go.” A knee-jerk confession, mumbled too fast. Exactly the wrong thing to say. He grits his teeth. “I haven’t been sleeping much.”

“Figures.” Cobb’s mouth has thinned, and he leans back, taking his hand with him. Din lets him go. Curls his fingers inwards against the emptiness in his palms. “Look, you’re gonna bed down here for now, okay? We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

Cobb raps his knuckles on the table top and pushes the massiff off to stand: he’s not asking, really. Even if he were, Din is in no fit state to argue.

“Please,” he says.

“Alright.” Cobb sucks in a sharp breath. “Okay, I’m going to get you some blankets.”

He disappears deeper into the house, and Din contemplates the monumental effort involved in moving himself from the table to the little platformed alcove behind him that doubles as a spare sleeping space. The massiff collapses into a corner, millennia of long-suffering animal weariness condensed into a deep, put-upon sigh as she settles.

Din snorts tiredly. “Yeah, girl. Me too.”

He manages to boost himself up so that he’s sitting on the edge of the platform, legs dangling, and topples onto his back.

He tries to relax, but his locked-up muscles can’t seem to accept the relief of being safe and horizontal. It’s the kind of thing a body forgets with lack of practice, and he’s been fighting his for so long it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it would fight him right back. It still feels monumentally unfair.

He’s itching again: an uneasy twinge that begins deep in his head and crawls down his spine, along the highways of his nervous system, to bury itself somewhere in the intimate recesses between his intestines and his tailbone. He breathes deep, looking to negotiate a truce, but the effortful rise of his chest only serves to make him hyper-aware of all the places where his beskar presses down into him, less a second skin and more a shell grown too exiguous to house him.

He lies there, crippled with exhaustion, letting the discomfort build in some sort of perverse game of chicken, until it’s so bad he would peel himself raw, if only to make it stop. He flinches first; lurches upright, and starts yanking at his gloves.

By the time Cobb comes back with a blanket, he’s still fumbling with his second vambrace. His face heats as Cobb watches his jerky progress without a word. Every catch is a losing fight. He feels stuck and extremely small and so frustrated he could scream.

It’s a long minute before the vambrace comes away from his forearm, dragging a miserable noise out of him as it goes. Cobb is very close all of a sudden, blankets dumped and hands held out.

“Why don’t I give you a hand with that?”

Din balks, tucking his chest out of Cobb’s reach. The defensiveness is as instinctual as breathing, and it takes Din a moment to realise that Cobb has stopped well short of making contact. He’s waiting, patience written into his face, his posture, his open palms.

“Can I?” Cobb asks again.

“You don’t _have_ to.” The frustration crests, putting a crack in Din’s voice.

“It’s not about have to. It’s okay. Let me help,” Cobb says, like it’s easy as that.

And maybe it is. Maybe it could be. Din watches Cobb telegraph his every movement, inching himself closer, and responds by staying exactly where he is. He thinks he might snap under the effort. Cobb’s hands are on his beskar. They’re steady on the back of Din’s shoulder, his ribs, the outside of his thigh as he extricates Din from the weight of his pauldrons, his breastplate, his thigh-guards, and Din allows it. Lets himself be touched carefully. Intentionally. The sense of release he’s been chasing floods through him, swelling and stretching in his chest until he’s close to tears.

Cobb must hear his ragged breathing even through the modulator, because he gentles him, “You’re okay, we’re nearly there.”

Din doesn’t trust himself to speak, just nods and works to pull himself together. But then Cobb gracelessly crouches down in front of him, going to his knees and running his fingers up Din’s calf to find the fastening of his boot, and gratitude surges up through Din so hard and fast he has to screw his face up tight and fight it down like nausea.

“There you go. All done.”

There’s a visible stiffness to Cobb as he levers himself back to his feet, a hand braced on the frame of the platform. Din reflexively moves to cup his elbow and help him up. Reflex has nothing to do with the way he uses his hold to pull Cobb into his space. He needs him close.

This time Din’s hands are bare, so when he touches Cobb’s jaw he can feel the live warmth of his skin, the soft texture of his beard. He presses the inside of his knee to Cobb’s hip.

“Thank you,” he offers up, and means it.

The furrows in Cobb’s forehead and the creases around his eyes have tightened into a frown, and Din honestly doesn’t know if he’s made things better or worse.

“Go to sleep, Mando.” There’s a finality to Cobb’s tone that allows Din to let go. He curls up and falls asleep in the safety of Cobb’s kitchen, Cobb looking drawn and conflicted in the low light.

**

Din wakes to Cobb clattering around the kitchen. He feels leaden, like he’s fourteen and still struggling under the heft of the training weights strapped to his limbs to make him faster, like he could sleep for years and it still wouldn’t be enough. Not exactly unusual, just unpleasant. Far more pressing is the foul dryness of his mouth and the reality of Cobb existing in the same space as he is. He hauls himself up onto an elbow.

Cobb, unaware of his audience, slugs back a half-cup of caf, grabs a container out of the cooling unit and starts scarfing down whatever’s inside. Still chewing furiously, he buckles his gun belt around his hips. It’s only when he turns to grab the datapad on the table that he catches Din watching. His pleasing whirlwind of activity dies as the tension running through his frame snaps taut.

“Oh. Morning.” Cobb shakes himself out of it. “Didn’t expect to see you awake. I have to go. There’s not much food in, but you’re welcome to it. I’ve left caf in the pot. You know where the sonic is. Just help yourself.”

Then he’s out of the door, closing it behind him with a short, sharp whistle that sends the massiff scrabbling across the porch. Din lets himself fall back into the covers, trying very hard not to think about the hard set of Cobb’s mouth and how good he’d looked backlit by sunshine, hair standing up in sleep-ruffled tufts.

In some vague attempt at normalcy, Din does shower. He drinks his caf while staring balefully at the pile his beskar makes in the corner. In the end he doesn’t put it back on, stowing it into the curtained crawlspace underneath his sleeping alcove. The feeling of transgression is nowhere near as powerful as it should be.

He scavenges the remainders of the food that Cobb abandoned on the table in his escape. The spicy, compact balls of grain and vegetables taste fantastic, and he eats too many. For the first time in weeks his stomach is full enough to compete for space with the useless, sodden weight he’s been dragging around in his chest since Dantooine.

Fatigue assails him again, his body finding the effort of digesting a little much to take, but the idea of crashing out in the moderately public space that is Cobb’s kitchen in broad daylight doesn’t sit well with him. He tries to find purchase in the familiar grooves of a worn-out ritual: if he can just figure out his next immediate move, he can pull himself up, get himself going. He makes the mistake of putting his head in his hands. He’ll fold his blankets, he decides, then go investigate.

He’s woken again, much later, by a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, hey,” Cobb is saying in a quiet voice. “Weren’t kidding when you said you hadn’t been sleeping much, huh?”

Din groans into the cradle of his arms, stiff-necked and grumpy about it.

Cobb’s hand moves to his nape. He deliberately slides a thumb under the helmet, kneading the muscle at the base of Din’s skull. Aftershocks of sensation ripple outwards, liquid smooth, until Din can feel them in his crown. Want crashes lazily in their wake. Din very nearly goes back under.

“Mando, I need the space. You gotta move.” He’s given a gentle shake. “Not far, my room’s next door. Come on now.”

Din staggers to his feet on autopilot, Cobb a close presence at his side. Then he’s in Cobb’s bedroom—dangerous territory—realising that he’s just let the window for polite refusal pass him by.

“All yours.” Cobb pauses, and Din can feel what little past they have pressing hard at them both. “I gotta—”

Between one breath and the next Cobb has disappeared behind another quickly shut door. Din sighs. He’s lagging like an old machine, too slow to manoeuvre around Cobb and too sleep-muddled to chase him. He turns his attention to the bed.

Cobb’s bed.

His mind skitters around the idea for a fractious moment, but hesitation isn’t really part of his skillset. His elders cured him of the sin of indecision at a very young age, for better or worse. So he decides, in a detached but determined sort of way, that he doesn’t want his grimy flightsuit to make contact with Cobb’s sheets. Decides to strip down to his undershirt and underwear, and crawl under covers that must smell like Cobb.

The thought solidifies, and he suddenly feels skin-hungry as a boy. He burrows further into the bedclothes, rubbing his bare shoulders and calves into the cool fabric, flattening his palms out so he can feel its texture all the way across his hands, even in the sensitive creases of his fingers, bunching the sheets into his fists when it gets to be too much.

His little cocoon is warming up around him, and he’s overwhelmed, existing somewhere slightly to the left of reality. He thinks about Cobb in the next room. Cobb in bed with him. Cobb’s fingers on him through the thick material of his flightsuit, on the naked skin of his neck. The way that distance is always relative, and the space that Cobb keeps closing and reopening between them. It dawns on him that he doesn’t know which pillow Cobb sleeps on when he’s not sharing his bed. The idiotic urge to find out is overpowering.

He pulls his helmet off, and immediately buries his uncovered face in a pillow, exchanging the stale smell of his own breath for something sweeter, a little faded. There’s the scent of whatever Cobb uses to wash his sheets, but there’s also a hint of something distinctly warm and human. Din switches pillows, rolling onto his stomach, and the smell of Cobb’s body is stronger on this one. He opens his mouth to inhale better, deeper, sucking as much of it into his chest as he possibly can. As it hits the back of his throat, he imagines how much sharper the real thing would be, how Cobb might smell if Din were to put his nose to his jugular, his inner thigh, his armpit.

The shapeless wash of desire that’s been rolling through him since he felt the pressure of Cobb’s thumb in the kitchen focuses, curling snugly in his belly, and he gets a hand between his legs. He squeezes his soft dick aimlessly, just for the vague pleasure of touching himself. It’s almost a comfort.

Sleep closes in around him again.

**

Din wakes for the third time feeling exposed and mortified. There is no grace period allowing him to enjoy the cosy warmth of a real bed or the fact that his mind is sharper than it has been in days. He’s barely conscious before he’s reaching for his helmet. He shoves his fists down against the mattress, and wills the steel in his shoulders down into his shaking hands.

He creeps into the kitchen. Thankfully it’s empty; Cobb isn’t there to see him dig his beskar out, holding onto the breastplate like it’s a life raft. He buckles himself back into place, more than a little spooked by the edge he’s been skirting.

Experience tells him his jittery soul will fare better under the open sky. He lets himself onto the porch, which is bathed in watery morning light. The quiet, chill air might have made it easier to breathe if Cobb weren’t there, too, slumped in a low corner seat. He’s sharing a bottle and his blanket with a smaller person, who’s leaned up against him like they belong. It’s too early for anyone else to be around. The nights are short this time of year, and they’ve clearly ridden this one out together.

Din’s restlessness is smothered by a concrete screed of disappointment. He stands there, struck dumb by his own presumption. He sees himself on the night he arrived, laying hands on Cobb’s face like he had every right to, without even considering that his touch might be unwelcome for more reasons than one. Cobb is watching him, alive with tension again. Din wonders distantly if fraught silence is the only language they share anymore.

“Mother and _Maker_.” Cobb’s friend rises, holding out a hand to Din. “Hi, I’m Max.” Now that Din can see them properly, he can place them. He accepts the handshake.

“I remember.”

They smile toothily. “Always nice to know you made an impression. I’ll leave you to it.” They pluck the near-empty bottle out of Cobb’s hands. Their next words are just for him. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And go to bed, cowboy. We don’t need you today.”

Cobb waves them off with a jerk of his chin. His eyes flick back to Din.

“Good to see you on your feet.”

“I was wiped out. Didn’t realise how badly, I guess. Must be getting old.”

“Aren’t we all,” Cobb shoots back. There’s an edge lurking under the platitude that Din doesn’t want to risk trying. He throws himself on another one, instead.

“So you two—” Din lets the sentence die off into an almost-question, and feels a coward for it.

“Us two?”

Cobb’s not going to let him get away with it.

“Are you together?”

“Bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?”

Din tips his head, acknowledging that he’s being put through his paces. “I didn’t mean to intrude,” he says lamely.

“Yeah, you said that already.”

Tension notwithstanding, something in Cobb’s demeanour has settled since Din last saw him. Maybe he’s remembered that this is his turf and he doesn’t have to keep ceding ground. Maybe he’s simply run out of doors to put between them. Whatever the reasoning, it looks like the decision that was hanging in the balance has been taken while Din was out. He wishes he’d had the chance to better defend his corner.

Cobb grunts in frustration, and Din realises he’s abandoned the flow of a normal conversation in favour of refamiliarising himself with the quirks of Cobb’s face and the way he sits. The sprawl of his legs. It’s all fairly humiliating.

“Will you sit _down_. I feel like an idiot looking up at you like this.”

Din does, back against the armrest, allowing for as much space as possible between them. Cobb’s not looking at him. Din turns his head, following Cobb’s sightline. The seat is angled to offer a clear view of the horizon beyond the town limits, a chance to keep an eye on the desert.

After a minute Cobb speaks again.

“Max and I aren’t together.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“Is it?”

Din sighs. They can’t seem to exchange a single word that isn’t loaded.

“I’m sorry about last night. All of it. I—It was inappropriate.”

Cobb’s gaze on him is level, a little exasperated. He’s waiting again, for Din to give him more, and Din doesn’t know what else to say. Not for lack of wanting. It’s quivering inside him, everything of himself he wants to spill out for Cobb to know.

“You don’t owe me anything. I was just—I was really out of it. But I didn’t expect anything from you. Coming back here.” Din not-quite-lies, because it's the right thing to say and because his inadmissible pipe dreams about what he would find in Mos Pelgo weren’t exactly expectations.

“Damn, Mando. Aren’t we past pretending?” The question is not asked gently. Din has the suspicion that Cobb’s drunker than he’s letting on. He’s certainly not interested in cutting Din any quarter.

“Apparently not,” Din replies, cowed.

Another beat of quiet circling. Cobb runs out of patience

“It wasn’t inappropriate,” He says. Then snorts. “Okay, it was definitely inappropriate. But I wanted it. I want it. You know that, right?”

Din hadn’t known. He’d hoped, and Cobb’s warm, serious eyes on him in the alcove had lent credence to the fantasy. To have it confirmed is a thrill. He breathes deep.

“Me too.”

“Alright,” Cobb says, and reaches for him.

They should talk about this conflagration that’s brewing between them before it blows them to pieces, but Cobb’s whole face is lit up with intent so fierce it verges on hostile, and his fingers are already at Din’s wrist, popping the button on his glove. Din wants very badly to let him have his way.

The glove comes off easy, the leather soft with use. Cobb strokes along Din’s knuckles. Rucks up his sleeve. He turns his hand over, and brings it to his mouth. He kisses the old, white scar that bisects the base of Din’s middle finger. His beard brushes Din’s skin as he moves his lips to Din’s palm, the heel of his hand, his wrist.

Din is thrown by how quickly his desire escalates. He feels skewered by it, right through the lower belly. Cobb can tell. He’s looking up at Din through his eyelashes, and there’s nothing coquettish about it. Din’s being appraised, every reaction gauged. Four years down the road and Cobb still watches him like the helmet isn’t an obstacle, just another part of Din he has to contend with.

Cobb rubs the tip of his nose back and forth against the veins in Din’s wrist. Din’s guts twist further in and around themselves. He gasps.

“Stars, but you’re desperate.”

The words are spoken mildly. Too mildly. Cobb means them to sting. Din can tell by the way he’s loosened his grip, not letting go, but waiting for Din to bridle. Din doesn’t pull back. He thinks about how selfishly he barrelled back into Cobb’s life and his awkward squirming in Cobb’s bed last night. If Cobb expects Din’s pride to be the sticking point, he’s going to have to re-evaluate.

“Yeah,” he croaks.

Cobb doesn’t smile at the admission. His expression flares, and Din is forcibly reminded that this is a man who seized an entire town on the strength of his anger. Cobb leans into Din’s space. His free hand has travelled up the inside of Din’s thigh, the flat of his forefinger high enough to be grazing the bulge Din’s cock makes in his flightsuit.

“We gonna do this outside? Your neighbours’ll talk,” Din says.

Cobb is cupping him now, his palm huge and hot and insistent. His face is in Din’s neck.

“You’ve already given the town plenty to talk about. Everyone figured whatever business you had, it was with me.” A lick of satisfaction curls into Cobb’s tone, as if he really likes the idea of the rest of Mos Pelgo recognising this claim he has on Din’s attention.

“Cobb.” Din’s voice sounds high to his own ears, a warning and an entreaty.

Cobb breaks away. “Yeah, okay,” he says in a breathless rush. He stands up and pulls Din along with him. “Let’s go, come on. Come _on_ ,” he insists as if Din’s not already on his feet, crowding him towards the kitchen.

The door slams behind them, Cobb quick to pin Din up against the inside of it. He plants a hand flat on Din’s breastplate, and steps back, straightening his arm as he goes, until he’s holding Din in place with a fingertip. He uses the distance to look Din over.

“You put it back on.” He traces the outline of Din’s pauldron. Runs his index finger slowly along the bottom edge of Din’s helmet, ear to chin. “Fuck, you look good.”

If this is how Cobb needs it, Din is happy to hand himself over. He broadens his stance, opening his legs like an invitation. Cobb juts out his jaw and squints at him, combative and a little disbelieving. Pleased. It’s a look Din is familiar with—the kind that Cobb had already been aiming at him in the cantina the first time they’d met, when Din had told Cobb to hand over the armour and given him the opening in a fight he was obviously spoiling for.

Cobb closes back in. His hand goes to Din’s neck, searching for skin. Din tilts his head to the side. He’s baring himself, as much as he ever does, and Cobb’s thumb finds its mark in the messy curls behind Din’s ear.

The beskar insulates Din from most of the sensation of Cobb nuzzling his cheek to Din’s—all but the pressure of it and the sound of Cobb’s breathing, loud and so very close that Din is having trouble separating it from his own. He likes that they’re mingling in this small way. Added to the sense-memories of the damp heat of Cobb’s breath on the webbing between his fingers and the smell of him on the sheets, it allows Din to build a composite impression of what it might be like to have Cobb pant his desire directly into Din’s mouth.

The idea hits him like a blaster shot to the gut. He was wound up even before Cobb put his hands on him, but now the skewered feeling is back, an untenable compression deep in the cradle of his pelvis, and all he can do is push his body forward into Cobb’s, wordlessly asking him to take some of it away. Cobb pushes back with his hands and his shoulders and his hips. Din’s helmet clunks hard against the door; he’s caught between the wood at his back and the demanding line of Cobb all up against his front, and it’s good again.

He doubts that Cobb’s in the mood for thank yous, so he keeps his mouth shut. But he dislodges the punitive grip Cobb has on his hip with his ungloved hand, and presses Cobb’s palm with his, making an offering that Cobb can choose to acknowledge, or not.

Cobb barely misses a beat, the span of a tightly held breath, before he laces their fingers together. He gets a thigh between Din’s, hips angled to give him something to rub off against. Din chases it, crude and too keen.

“That’s it, go on.” Cobb’s encouragement is pitched low and mean. “You’re so hard. Is this all you needed? Came running back to me so I would make you give it up.” He means it as another jab, but it doesn’t land that way. The tender, infatuated part of Din thrashes ecstatically under the truth of how much he wants Cobb to take him apart, take the weight off his shoulders; make him feel, make him come, make him stay. An embarrassing, half-stifled moan fights its way out of his throat.

“You put yourself right back in my hands. Big, tough Mandalorian, all wrapped up in your armour and your own story. But you let me take it off you.”

Cobb gets his free hand between them, between Din legs, rubbing his cock through his flightsuit, digging his fingers hard into the meat of Din’s inner thigh. Din yelps, too turned on to tell what’s good and what’s bad. It’s all stimulation, and he feels lit up with it.

“Yeah, you gave it up so easy. I didn’t even have to work for it. You this easy for anyone who offers to take care of you?” There’s something ugly and ungovernable crawling under Cobb’s words, and Din isn’t sure what he’s trying to say, who he’s trying to wound. Pressed close as they are, Din can’t see Cobb’s face.

Cobb’s fingers edge under Din’s stomach padding and into the gap between the two pieces of his flightsuit. They give the button on his pants a questioning tug.

“Yeah,” Din pants. “Yes, please.”

Cobb pops the button and works his way under Din’s waistband without undoing his fly. Din hollows out his stomach to help, the material stretches taut, and Cobb’s in. He can’t even move to touch Din properly like this, but his whole hand is pressed up tight against Din’s blood-hot, oversensitised cock.

Cobb hasn’t let go of Din’s hand, and there’s not a thought in Din’s head, just the two burning points of contact Cobb’s palms make on his naked skin. It’s hardly anything, and it’s almost more than Din can take.

Din’s zipper makes an angry noise as its teeth are forced apart under the strain of Cobb’s wrist. He gets his fingers all the way around Din’s cock, gives him a couple of rough, dry strokes, and that’s all Din needs.

“Cobb, I’m gonna—”

Din’s orgasm builds quickly and kicks through him hard. Cobb swears. Draws back. He’s not looking Din in the face; he’s watching Din’s cock jerk in his hand, using Din’s mess to slick his shaft, tight and methodical. Din twitches at the wet slide of Cobb’s fingers, body spasming into and away from the bolts of too-bright sensation.

Cobb doesn’t relent. He still hasn’t looked up. His forehead has dropped to Din’s shoulder. Din barely hears him say, “Fuck, I just want—” before he goes to his knees for the second time in as many days.

Cobb buries his face in Din’s exposed lower stomach. He kisses the crease of Din’s groin, presses his cheek into Din’s pubic hair, the flat of his tongue to the base of Din’s cock, and it’s fervent, nothing like the calculated seduction of his lips on Din’s palm earlier. He’s touching Din like he can’t help himself, and it makes Din’s insides contort in shock and pleasure.

Cobb is so gentle, licking around and under his fingers where he still has a loose hold on Din’s cock. Din aches to show him the same. He thumbs the scar on Cobb’s temple, pushes his fingers through the short sides of Cobb’s hair.

Cobb tenses and looks up at him, caught. Then he’s tucking Din back in, getting to his feet, rolling his shoulders like he can shrug off the precious, honest thing that just passed between them. He’s still trying to shut doors in Din’s face.

Din doesn’t let him speak. Whatever vulgarity Cobb’s about to weaponise, he doesn’t want to hear it. He braces his wobbly legs and stands up properly, squaring himself up into a battering ram. Cobb’s off-balance as soon as he takes his first step backwards, and it’s easy to keep pushing until his thighs hit the lip of the kitchen table. Din hooks a thumb into Cobb’s back belt loop and tugs, making it clear where he wants Cobb to go. Cobb lifts himself, then Din’s standing in newly created space between his legs. He smooths his hands up Cobb’s thighs, putting some weight behind them, letting Cobb feel it.

“Mando?” Cobb’s breathing fast, but his eyes are careful. Din leashes his dissatisfaction. He wants to be shown the excessive, unguarded hunger Cobb knelt for. He balls a fist up in Cobb’s shirt at the waist, yanking it free of his pants.

“Shut up, Cobb. Just—” He tugs off his other glove with his teeth. He’s given a considerable amount of thought to how he would touch Cobb if he ever got the chance to again, silly, overheated fantasies in which his hard life and his inexperience don’t matter, and he manages to make his violent hands as kind and loving as he wants them to be. In reality he doesn’t know that he has the capacity, let alone the guts to try. Not that this Cobb would allow it.

He settles for spreading both hands across the bare skin of Cobb’s belly. Cobb’s built lean, but Din doesn’t remember him being quite so thin. He’s warm though, vital and hardy and coiled through with relentless, hair-raising energy that still commands Din’s attention as absolutely as it has since the moment they first squared off against each other.

Din chalked his episode in Cobb’s bed up to near-delirium, but there’s something roaring under the skin of his palms again. He gropes at Cobb, kneading handfuls of his midriff, delighting in the sure expansion of his ribcage.

Cobb looks a little ridiculous, shirt still buttoned and rucked up almost to his neck. Din wants to bite his chest. He imagines it, _really_ imagines it: his dark head buried in Cobb’s breastbone, Cobb cradling him, nails against his scalp, pulling him closer, the way Cobb’s skin would taste, the bruises he would leave. What it would feel like, what it would look like. He wants to wrap himself up in Cobb like he did in his bedsheets.

His building derangement is interrupted by a snicker. He looks up to find Cobb wearing a tiny, crooked smile. It’s Din’s turn to be caught. He clears his throat.

“I ain’t saying a thing. I was told to shut up,” Cobb says, raising one hand in surrender, while the other goes to the button at his neck.

Din’s cheeks burn as he scrapes together the wherewithal to let Cobb go and help. Cobb’s shirt falls open, and Din deliberately slows himself down. Starts again. This time he’s diligent, touching Cobb in ways that make his stomach muscles jump and his mouth part. His chest hair curves gracefully towards his collarbones. There’s easy pleasure in following the lines of him.

Din’s thumb tracks a tendon standing out in Cobb’s neck all the way up to the bump his skull makes behind his ear. He takes Cobb’s earlobe between thumb and forefinger, and gently rolls the small gold hoop Cobb wears through it.

“Mando.” Cobb is holding his face very stiffly against the cup of Din’s palm. Din might be pushing too hard.

He opts for distraction. Cobb’s belt is easily pulled open, and Din runs the back of his knuckles along the outline of Cobb’s cock, revealed under thin material.

Cobb makes a short, testy noise, but Din hushes him.

“Not yet, mmh? Not yet.”

His hand slips into the loosened pool of Cobb’s trousers and underclothes, along the warm skin of his hip. He finds the joint between thigh and pelvis with his thumb, feeling how Cobb is put together, and pauses. Instead of fuzz, Din’s wandering pinkie has run into scar tissue on Cobb’s upper thigh. He investigates. It’s raised and extensive.

“What’s this?” he asks.

Cobb slides his eyes off to one side.

“Got a little banged up. Mos Pelgo’s been busy while you been gone.”

It feels ugly. Din wonders briefly about all the hurts, big and small, that Cobb must have accumulated without him.

“We comparing old war wounds, then? You gonna show me yours next?” Cobb asks with calculated nonchalance.

Din’s eyes narrow, instinct guiding him. “Okay, Cobb.” He pushes himself more firmly between Cobb’s open thighs, and holds a hand up to Cobb’s face. “Spit.”

Cobb takes the out. He wraps his hands around Din’s and spits into his palm, slicks Din’s fingers with his tongue. He’s still holding onto Din’s wrist when Din starts touching him. He’s pushing, trying to make Din go at him harder. Din doesn’t let himself be pushed.

He doesn’t even stroke Cobb properly. He explores, experiments. Adjusts the pressure of his fingers, plays with Cobb, with his balls, with the edge of his foreskin where it stretches around the thick head of his cock. He does it until Cobb’s fidgeting, leaning back on his hands to find some leverage and push his hips up into Din’s hand. Din makes his fingers into the loosest possible circle, and lets Cobb fuck it ineffectually. Cobb groans with frustration. He sounds almost angry, his head tipped back, teeth bared. Din changes tack, tightening his grip to give Cobb a few nice, firm pulls.

“Fucking finally. Ah, _ah_ ,” Cobb gasps, and automatically relaxes in relief. Din smiles. He draws comforting semi-circles into Cobb’s flank. They find a good rhythm together.

The suns have come up properly, flooding the kitchen with light. Cobb is dappled with it. There’s spit on his bottom lip. His pulse is beating visibly in his throat. All the lovely, mobile infrastructure of his body is spread out for Din to look at.

Din wishes he were younger, or that Cobb hadn’t found it quite so easy to make him come, so that he could nudge his cock up alongside Cobb’s, stroke them both off against his stomach, unhurried and intimate.

“I missed you,” he says, without thinking, because it’s true.

Cobb scrabbles at Din’s shoulder, the heavy material of the flightsuit providing no purchase. He ends up hooking his fingers behind Din’s pauldron instead, palm over Din’s clan mark. His knees have come up around Din. His calf is pressing against Din’s backside. Din is being held onto with everything Cobb has.

“Earlier, you asked me—” Din can’t bring himself to repeat the words, but Cobb knows what he’s talking about. His eyes are large in his face. “I’m not—It’s not easy. You make me want it. Just you, Cobb.”

“Fuck,” Cobb grits out, and Din gets his wish. Something awful yawns open in Cobb’s face, starving and lonely and vast. This is vulnerability in the truest sense of the word: Cobb so defenceless that just looking at him feels like a violation. This is what Cobb didn’t want Din to see. Din wrenches his gaze away, guilt-stricken.

Cobb knocks Din’s nerveless fingers aside to take himself in hand, starts stripping his cock in hard, determined jerks. Din didn't want it to go like this. He tentatively cups Cobb’s elbow and leans their temples together.

“Cobb—”

Cobb comes on a low, wretched shout. There’s a suspended moment, filled only with the deafening sound of their broken-up breathing. Shock reverberates through Din. He doesn’t know how to make this better. But Cobb is right there, Din can feel him shaking, and he wants to hold him. So he tries, gathering Cobb up close. Cobb responds almost immediately. His arms wind tight around Din’s neck, and he presses his bare, sticky chest to Din’s beskar. Din spreads his own unsteady hands across Cobb’s back, and rubs Cobb’s heaving ribs as gently as he would stroke Grogu’s little ears after a bad dream.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this is technically a wip in the sense that i've got a lot more planned. HOWEVER i'm the slowest writer in the world and uni is about to start back up again, so i'm posting as a one-shot for now in hope of coming back to it later. but you know, if you enjoy please stay tuned! [you can also give it a reblog on tumblr ](https://benevolentbridgetroll.tumblr.com/post/639429855525650432/new-session-archive-of)
> 
> everyone and their mother has read it by now but credit where credit is fucking due: [zoe's insane dincobb fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27582674) is what kickstarted this whole madness and i would not have got even this far without their tireless cheerleading, thank you so much for literally everything! thank you also to bry and joe for just the rowdiest beta reading experience ever and ranting with me about cowboys, space or otherwise, every day of our goddamn lives


End file.
